Launching While Female by Susanne Althoff

Author:Susanne Althoff [Althoff, Susanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

A lot of times I sit down and think, ‘Am I crazy? Am I really just an aggressive and obnoxious bitch?’ Maybe it’s not sexism. Maybe it’s some other thing that’s totally separate. Malicious sexism would be a lot easier to deal with. When I’ve experienced overt sexism, it’s really easy to sit people down and say, ‘Oh, my God. Please don’t ever say that again.’”

While working on her doctorate in public health at Harvard, Tariana V. Little built an app called FooFii that helps people who need food find resources. Little, who finished her degree in 2020, was inspired by her own family’s experience with food insecurity. This is her second company. The first is the Boston-based media agency Em-Vision Productions, which she cofounded with her husband in 2013. Little tells me their identities—he’s German American and she has Dominican, German, and Mexican heritage—often lead people to assume he’s leading the operation, even though she’s the CEO. “It can be difficult because here’s this tall white male, and that is the stereotype of a business owner, and so I feel like I have to assert myself more, justify more who I am and what my role is.”

Little has also learned, for her own sanity, to let it slide sometimes. “If I were to intervene every time, it would be really taxing and annoying,” she says. “I had to learn how to prioritize when to call it out and when to not. It’s unfortunate that women have to be in this predicament.”

Natalya Bailey, the cofounder and CEO of Accion Systems, a Boston start-up developing microsized engines for satellites that has raised over $15 million in funding, recalls the time she showed up at a conference but wasn’t initially allowed into the auditorium. A man told her, “There’s a space conference going on. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you’re not going in there.”

Bailey was the keynote speaker.

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